In stereoscopic display systems, object depth information is required to generate different images intended for viewing by a left and right eye of a viewer. Typically, such depth information is provided to a display system in the form of a depth map that accompanies a two-dimensional image. Prior Art FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary two-dimensional image 102 accompanied by a depth map 104.
Ideally, the depth information of the aforementioned depth map accurately reflects a distance from the viewer to the object along a depth axis (i.e. z-axis). Current stereoscopic display systems use contents of a z-buffer (i.e. depth buffer, etc.) in place of such depth information.
Unfortunately, the contents of a z-buffer does not exactly correspond with accurate object depth information. For example, z-coordinates are often transformed before being written to the z-buffer. One illustrative transformation is as follows: Z_output=A+B/Z_input, where A and B include constants. Unless A and B are known, it is impossible to recover the accurate depth information of the object from the aforementioned Z_output.
To this end, current stereoscopic display systems are required to rely on inaccurate depth information when generating left and right eye content. This, in turn, results in a reduction in quality from the perspective of the viewer. There is thus a need for addressing these and/or other issues associated with the prior art.